


For You, I’d Watch The World Burn

by randomknowledgequeen



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Before Death, Character Death, Death, Fluff and Angst, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Nonbinary Character, Oneshot, Poetic, Reader-Insert, Romance, Sad, Sad and Happy, Sad with a Happy Ending, Titans, Waiting, erwin is kinda cute tho, happy for me anyway, no pronouns really used, x Reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:01:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29867460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomknowledgequeen/pseuds/randomknowledgequeen
Summary: In our final moments, all we have are pretty little things to take with us when we go.
Relationships: Erwin Smith/Reader
Kudos: 18





	For You, I’d Watch The World Burn

Screams rung out like church bells ringing out for prayer. Every Sunday, they’d ring for a long time, uniting the holy and scorning the damned. I had always considered myself one of the damned in the most simplest form. I didn’t believe in God. God was a concept to make us feel better about being caged like birds unable to fly. And these bells were a kick to the teeth that finished the feeling. Yet, the bells now were the screams of the lost and the alone. They were trampled on like cattle and torn apart like parchment. Their blood on the walls were the ink to the broken poetry of unfairness. As the sun set in a golden blaze, I found myself almost alone completely in preparation to my own sad and pitiful death.

Almost alone.

Oceans parted for his gaze, he commanded the world with an iron grip and now he was sitting by my side to watch it end. All that work had not payed off. It had left a blank canvas as empty as it was at the start, before the painter even picked up the brush and poured out the paint. Storms were brewing in them, festering on his unquenched will and his unfinished dreams. 

I pitied the man who could only see the pain of his actions. Or lack of, in this case.

He sat in silence, legs strung out in front of himself and arms limp in his lap. His gaze was only on the destruction around him rather than the beauty of the sunset. It would be the last pretty thing he could see and yet he chose to watch every last one of his men die. He was engraving it to memory, filing his undoings and scarring himself with his failures. Again, I pitied him. That’s probably why I wasn’t questioning him. We just sat and listened to the screams and bloodshed. 

“If you keep looking at the ugly, you’ll forget the beauty above us, Commander.”

I don’t really know why I said it. Maybe it was because the screams and gargles of Titans were getting too much for the stifled silence between us. It left like he was oceans apart and he was simply a boat caught in its midst while I was the lighthouse left unknowingly searching for the man he used to be. A brittle breeze blew through the houses. It pushed his hair out of place and falling flat upon his face. The honey soaked strands didn’t moved from the crease of his forehead, simply sitting there out of place like a brush stroke that sat out of place on a masterpiece. He didn’t make the slightest move to fix it. The man only blinked slowly as if registering what I had said or maybe he was registering the mass amounts of blood staining his hands and clothes. 

There was a slight intake of breath, “And what good would that do to ignore the soldiers fighting my war?”

He didn’t even look at me. His gaze was snared in the trap of death. My gaze, however, never really left the side of his face. The strongness of his face had drained to the tired expression of a hero having seen too much darkness to ever see the light again. I urged to just hold his cheek and tell him that it was all he could do, that no more could have been asked of him.

“It would bring you peace before you perish, one last pretty thing to take with you as you leave.” I let the words pirouette out my lips and fall into the thickness of tension and painful comfort. 

We were bonded through circumstance and fated to be doomed on the same day, same hour, same minute and same second.

I noticed the frown on his lips and dip of his eyebrows, curved in an elegance unknown to man and caked in a deeply routed sadness. 

“If that is the reason then I wouldn’t be looking at the sky, (Y/N).” He breathed out as he closed his eyes for a moment. Erwin took in the world before giving himself the ability to complete his phrase. “I’d be looking at you.”

The tides swept me away and into his eyes, leaving me love struck and sea sick at the same time -I was lost at sea and in need of a map to the heart of it. My heart fluttered in the slightest, my lungs stole my breath and my stomach erupted into butterflies dancing their last dance. His eyes never left mine, holding them in his gentle gaze yet showing his firm feelings. His eyes reminded me of a midnight sky, speckled with stars and crowned the most beautiful being to exist in nature. The depths were intoxicating to stare at, and you’d become addicted long before you even realise it. 

I remembered a time we shared a drink over dinner, a conversation over horseback and a night of paperwork. And I knew we weren’t only just bonded by circumstance. We were bonded by the dire need to not be alone. We were bonded over understanding and sympathy.

“There are far more prettier things in this world, Commander.” My gaze lifted to the sky and I wished I just had an ounce of fuel to fly once more and free fall to my unhappy ending. “More pretty things to waste your last moments on than me.”

“And yet none seem to come close to match your limitless worth.” A light pressure was applied to where my hand was, a rough finger tip grazing over the scars of my fingers from long fights and tiresome training. My skin ignited with his feathery touch and craved his presence to be closer. I was a moth drawn to a bright bursting flame of light, I only wanted his attention, affection and all else in-between. “I don’t want you to doubt yourself in these final moments, (Y/N). At least give me this one final request.”

Never had a man’s eyes been more reassuring and pleading. Vulnerable was the word I was looking for. Never had his eyes been more vulnerable to me than now. They were round and soft and begged to heard even if they couldn’t speak. They were probably be the second thing I ever noticed about him. The first were his eyebrows of course. 

“Only for you, Erwin.” My thumb came around to brush his hand, tracing every indent into memory so I could take this with me to another life.

“For you, I’d set the world aflame if you asked me to.” He brought my hand up in his fragile touch. He treated me like porcelain ready to fall apart at any moment. “I’d do anything for you.” 

A peppery kiss was pressed against the crease of my knuckles.

“And for you, I’d watch the world burn.” Leaning every so slightly down, I knew I was breathless as my chest hammered like a drum. “As long as you stayed by my side.”

A titan’s scream ripped through the air but we didn’t care. 

There was only each other in this moment. This was our moment. This was the moment we finally had the guts to admit what had been weighing us down for months. 

This was our moment to be free.

“It would be a nightmare if I ever did.” He pressed another kiss to the warmth of my palm. The light in his eyes was like the sun casting its gaze upon the ocean. It glistened along the surface as calm as the current that glided underneath it. As cautiously as I possibly could, I moved along the roof to be by his side. Our legs touched and shoulders brushed. Erwin didn’t seem bothered at all, in fact he leaned into the forbidden touch and took it in like it was pain relief for the most harshest of injuries. 

My free hand finally cupped his cheek and brought our foreheads together. He couldn’t ever leave my gaze like his could never leave mine. 

“Oh (Y/N)...” he breathed in the smell of rubble and ash around us. He let the coppery smell hit the back of his throat before he spoke again, “If only I weren’t such a coward... We’d have more than just this moment between us. We’d have more to remember than this.”

I shook my head with the smallest of smiles, “Don’t think of it like that. Think of this as one of those rare beautiful moments we share only once in our lives. This is ours. This is our forever moment. This is the pretty little thing we get to take with us when we go.”

His lip quivered slightly. I barely noticed it. I barely noticed the tremble to his body and shake to his voice.

“Our forever moment...” he sniffled a laugh, grin as white as pearls and just as genuine, “If only it actually was that...”

I found myself laughing little with him. For the briefest of moments, I allowed myself to close my eyes and just take him in. I allowed myself to dig my hole just a little deeper and fall into the bliss of Erwin Smith. The poems he left on my desk, the funny little smiles and hardly readable handwriting: they were all from him for me. They were mine. For my eyes only. Just like how this moment was. He smelt sweet underneath the thick layer of blood. His blood. Like caramel.

He brought me caramel from my first birthday with the scouts. It was wrapped up in a little purple box with a pretty red ribbon. The same ribbon I used to tie around my belt loop... it was blowing somewhere in the wind now, trying to find peace among the wreckage. 

Why did he smell so sweet? Like butter cream and sugar... It was so tempting to get a taste, to see what the taste of his lips would be. Would they be the grey Earl he drinks? Or would they be as sickly sweet as honey? 

I didn’t want to open my eyes to reality. At any moment we could be spotted and stolen away from each other by the grips of our natural born enemy. I didn’t want to lose him. I wanted to bleed out with him. I didn’t want to not be touching him. Not touching him would be like the sun wasn’t there and the world was cold and frozen over with no life able to survive there. I couldn’t not be by his side. I promised him I would be there forever.

“Pretend.” I muttered, a whisper that fell from my lips like a lone leaf falling from a tree in autumn, “Let me pretend it is.”

There was the sound of a nosey laugh. His forehead fully rested into mine as he relaxed. I knew he was smiling; cheeks rosey yet soon to turn pasty, eyes closed not ready to open yet and lips so kissable yet slowly going to turn an ugly shade of blue. Blue like a duck egg. Blue like winter. Blue like sorrow. I never want to see such a blue on his lips ever. 

“We can pretend.” He whispered back, voice hushed and rough with rawness. “We can always pretend.”

I listened to his intakes of breath. The slight strain was barely there if not there at all. You wouldn’t never have imagined he was losing blood. You would never imagine I was either. A slash to the side was nothing compared to a crushed rib. His breath was something I never knew I needed to hear until now. Not until I needed reassurance he was still here with me and not drifting off into oblivion. I could only imagine now what it would be like to hear his soft breathes in the morning after a peaceful night. I could only imagine the sun hitting his face through the window as he slept blissfully unaware of what the day may bring. I would lay there for hours watching him breathe. I bet he would have looked like an Angel wrongfully casted from heaven, a slice of beauty reserved just for me.

He almost made me believe there was a god to make such a divine specimen of human.

He almost made me believe... that it was okay to have him.

He made falling in love look like a beautiful idea. 

“(Y/N)...” he said my name like it was the most gorgeous name in the world. 

“Yes?” 

He didn’t say anything else, only leaning down to capture my lips as the world ended. His sharp nose poked my cheek and his hand held the back of my neck. His nails grazed the sensitive skin of my neck. I hadn’t even opened my eyes and nor had he probably. His lips were a hot flush against my own.

I kissed back with a passion I had forgot was there. 

I pushed into him, gripping his jacket tightly with pale knuckles. Moving in sync, I felt the butterflies in my stomach go into a frenzy. My commander was kissing me and I wasn’t rejecting it. He grazed my lip with his teeth. A knot formed that I couldn’t untwine. It formed with him and allowed me no space to deny him. 

My first and last kiss.

How poetic.

Erwin pulled away slightly to take a shaky breath. I did the same as my head pulsed and I tried to grip myself back into reality rather than the fantasy of him. 

“I’d watch the world burn with you. No questions asked.” He managed out between almost silent pants. My hand moved up to run through his distorted hair. His eyes were still entranced, unfaltering and seeing me as the only thing and everything at the same time. 

“We have front row seats to the end of the world.” I laughed a bitter laugh. “We can watch it together.”

He pulled me closer by my waist, “There’s nothing I’d love more in the world than that.”

We turned to the havoc still happening around us. The titans, the pain and the rubble of our little corner of the world: all was taken from us and more would be taken sooner rather than later. I dreaded the moment he’d be ripped from me. I’d have no control over it. I could go out swinging and still be dead alongside him in the end. So all we could do was stay silent, hold hands and watch the sunset over the tragedy of our lives.

But strangely enough, I wasn’t sad.

I was... at peace.

As he gazed up at the darkening sky, there was no doubt in my mind. God was reclaiming his angel soon, and I just hoped he’d take me along side him. To soar with wings made of stars and halos of gold, there was nothing else to look forward to other than the rest of eternity with Erwin.

We sat and watched as the world ended around us.

**Author's Note:**

> I could write more, I could write the leadings up to this to make this even worse. But the question is: should I?


End file.
